Heartwishes Read online

  “Yes,” she said, and her heart was beating in her throat. She didn’t feel she needed to say that here and now was where she was supposed to be.

  After dinner, they talked. They still knew so few facts about each other, and both of them had many things they’d never told anyone.

  Colin told how he’d been made a full sheriff only recently. A special election needed to be held before the job could be filled, and he hadn’t wanted to go through it. “The thought of sticking posters up around town touting me for sheriff wasn’t something I could imagine myself doing,” he said.

  “So who ran your campaign?”

  Colin looked down at his beer for a moment. “My mother hired some woman from . . .” He waved his hand.

  “New York?”

  “Of course.”

  Together they laughed about the whole thing.

  They were in bed by ten and at the gym the next morning at six-thirty. This time, they were the only ones there. Mike and Sara had gone back to Fort Lauderdale, and Luke texted that he and Joce had been up all night with the babies. No one else showed up. After their workout, Colin bolted the front door and they made love on a couple of weight benches, then showered together.

  After a week together, they’d fallen into a routine, with both of them spending their days separate and at their respective jobs. In the evening, Colin would text the single word Home and Gemma would leave the guesthouse and drive to their house.

  A second robbery that was very much like the first one interrupted their peace. Again, it happened during the day, while the owner was home. This time a small wall safe had been opened and an antique brooch taken.

  That night Gemma saw a different Colin than the one she’d been seeing. When he was silent, his brow furrowed, she knew she needed to get him to talk.

  It wasn’t easy. After she’d failed at several attempts at conversation, she said, “I guess you are the kind of man I have to beg.”

  He gave a little smile, then got up and went out to his car. He brought back a thick folder of photos that Roy had taken at the two crime scenes.

  “Both times,” Colin said, “the burglar walked in the front door, unseen by anyone of the house or any of the neighbors. And both times something that was hidden was stolen.”

  Gemma looked at the pictures. Both houses had trees around them that made it easier to get in without being seen. But then what? How was a hidden compartment in a bedpost found? Who knew how to crack a safe?

  Colin spread all the documents out on the big coffee table Gemma had chosen. She sat on a pillow on the floor while he took the couch. Together, they spent hours reading the statements and going over the photos.

  Gemma was startled to read that the little wall safe had contained $25,000 in cash as well as documents and the brooch. “But the thief left the money?” she asked.

  “Didn’t touch it.” He pulled a paper from the bottom of the pile. “This is an insurance photo of what was taken.”

  It was a big, and very ugly, brooch with little garnets and dirty-looking aquamarines.

  “I can’t see that it would bring a lot of money when they tried to sell it,” Gemma said. “It’s certainly not fashionable. Unless it was owned by someone famous, maybe.”

  “No, it wasn’t, and it was appraised at only two thousand two hundred dollars.”

  “That makes no sense,” Gemma said. “Why would someone risk jail for a robbery of a pin they would sell for much less than the cash that was just sitting there?”

  “You come up with an answer, let me know,” Colin said as he stood up and yawned. “I don’t know about you, but I’m bushed.”

  Smiling, she went to the bedroom with him and they made love. But afterward, Colin fell asleep and Gemma, ever curious, went back to the living room to look at the photos from the robberies.

  She reread the questions Colin had asked the victims and their replies. There didn’t appear to be anything linking the two families. They didn’t know each other, never went to the same functions.

  But on the back of one paper Colin had written They both have ten-year-old daughters. Below it he’d written, School? Church? Clubs? Rival cliques at school? Did the girls steal on a dare?

  Gemma got her purse, found the little magnifying glass she kept in the zipped compartment, and began looking at the photos Roy had taken of the girls’ rooms. It was 3 A.M. when she circled the two little branches of willow, their stems tied with pink bows.

  Her impulse was to wake Colin and show him, but then she thought he’d probably seen the little bouquets. She crawled into bed beside him, put her back against his big one, and fell asleep instantly.

  She was awakened by what sounded like the roar of a bull, and before she could open her eyes, Colin was pulling her out of bed. He lifted her by her shoulders and planted a hard kiss on her lips.

  “I didn’t see that and neither did Roy,” he said as he began to dress. “Gemma, you are great, wonderful. I have to go to the office, and I’ll need to talk to these girls before they go to school. If these branches were left by the thief, I’ll look at all the files to see if someone matches that MO. Mike has contacts in the Feds, and so does Frank. Maybe I can tap into their files.”

  She was very pleased that she’d made him so happy.

  When he was dressed, he kissed her again. “I don’t know how long this will take. If I have to go somewhere to find out anything . . .” He looked at her as if to ask if that was all right with her.

  “Go! Do your work. I’m going to get someone to show me those old carriages.”

  “Get Dad. He never has enough people to listen to him about his old wagons.”

  He kissed her again, then was gone.

  22

  COLIN CALLED HER at 10 A.M. and said he was going to D.C. to check out a lead. He said the robberies might have been committed by someone the FBI had been hunting for years.

  “I’ll miss you,” he said. “Me too.” She was smiling as she hung up.

  Gemma took Colin’s advice and asked Mr. Frazier to show her the carriages, and they ended up spending the whole day together. As he talked knowledgeably about, as she’d been told, “anything with wheels,” she began to understand his disappointment that none of his children shared the Frazier passion. What would happen to all that the family had so carefully stored over the centuries if there was no one to carry it into the next generation?

  As for the pretty little yellow carriage, Shamus had already removed the seat and photographed the plaque. It read:

  A GIFT TO

  EDILEAN TALBOT MCTERN HARCOURT

  FROM SHAMUS FRAZIER

  1802

  “A man who uses as few words as my Shamus,” Mr. Frazier said.

  “And both of them are artists,” Gemma answered.

  “And my Shamus gets straight As in school.” Mr. Frazier’s voice was full of pride as he took her to a second warehouse.

  By evening, she was ready to snuggle with Colin and tell him all that she’d seen and heard and what she’d thought about it all. But he didn’t return. At about eight, he texted her that he was still in D.C. I’ll be back as soon as I can, he added.

  At 1 A.M. her phone woke her. Colin told her that his brother Pere had been in a car wreck.

  “Was he badly hurt?” Gemma asked, sitting up and wide awake.

  “Not bad,” Colin said. “Tris is with him, and they promised to keep me informed. I was going to come back, but Dad said not to.”

  “Should I go to the hospital?”

  “No,” Colin said. “The place will be packed with people. But, Gemma, would you find out the truth? If it’s serious they might not tell me.”

  “I’ll find out,” she promised. “I’ll call Tris and ask him.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Now go to bed.”

  “It’s lonely without you here hogging all the space.”

  “It’s lonely here without you in every way,” he answered and they hung up.

  Gemma tried to sleep,